Request tacticle help for USN planes

[Jumoschwanz]

Yet another thread where someone is disappointed that they can not win against the enemies aircraft by "dogfighting".

Always in the face of incredible overwhelming history that says dogfighting was far down the list of things that won the air war in WWII.

The United States and USSR advantage in WWII air combat was either in teamwork and/or overwhelming production capability. Japan was a tiny island and Germany was a tiny country, both with very limited resources.

It was the rare exception in WWII when an allied pilot with sensational flying ability was able to successfully dogfight with an experience Japanese pilot in a Japanese aircraft.
There are so many books, essays and articles filled with how the allied aircraft's advantage lay in speed and teamwork that it would take you a lifetime to read them all, but the ones everyone looks at are the very few where some good allied pilot used his bag of tricks to get his SBD, Wildcat, Hellcat etc. to fly toe to toe with some Jap pilot of questionable skill.

The only way to beat Aces flying Jap planes is to use an advantage in E or numbers, or to exploit a weakness in the AI.

All the bad things that ever happened to this sim have had allied Fan-Boys at the root of it, complaining that they can not dogfight with Axis craft, or that their machine guns for some reason are not as powerful as CANNONS. They will look for anyway to get things done except for the way it was done in history, including hacking the official patches of IL2.

[Marabekm]

Fly with a wingman or 3. Use teamwork. Which will never happen since that will just lead to kill stealing and shoulder shooting calls.

[MaxGunz]

Originally Posted by Jumoschwanz

Yet another thread where someone is disappointed that they can not win against the enemies aircraft by "dogfighting".

Always in the face of incredible overwhelming history that says dogfighting was far down the list of things that won the air war in WWII.

The United States and USSR advantage in WWII air combat was either in teamwork and/or overwhelming production capability.

Untrue. Both the US and USSR made faster planes in time to often have the equal or better plane to the German ones. Dogfighting ... see what the highest scoring German Aces wrote about dogfighting. Numbers ... East Front 1941-1942 ... who had the numbers and the faster planes?

Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Dogfighting is for biplanes and beginners.

Japan was a tiny island and Germany was a tiny country, both with very limited resources.

They picked the fight.

It was the rare exception in WWII when an allied pilot with sensational flying ability was able to successfully dogfight with an experience Japanese pilot in a Japanese aircraft.
There are so many books, essays and articles filled with how the allied aircraft's advantage lay in speed and teamwork that it would take you a lifetime to read them all, but the ones everyone looks at are the very few where some good allied pilot used his bag of tricks to get his SBD, Wildcat, Hellcat etc. to fly toe to toe with some Jap pilot of questionable skill.

Stanley Vejtasa in an SBD took 3 Zeros down in a fight with many. He had a much slower and less maneuverable plane and they had numbers. Please re-iterate how the Allies only won through numbers. That was October 1942. Would you say that Japan had so few good pilots then that none of those were attackers were good?

In every air force there are the few that count for half or more of all victories. But while it's okay to champion Joachim Marseilles it is bad to champion Joe Foss? It must be so if you feel so bad over what are no more than little boy's arguments for national pride.

The only way to beat Aces flying Jap planes is to use an advantage in E or numbers, or to exploit a weakness in the AI.

All the bad things that ever happened to this sim have had allied Fan-Boys at the root of it, complaining that they can not dogfight with Axis craft, or that their machine guns for some reason are not as powerful as CANNONS. They will look for anyway to get things done except for the way it was done in history, including hacking the official patches of IL2.

Have you forgotten the first YEARS of IL2? Russian Lazers? My FW doesn't turn fast enough. My 109 can't do this thing in my book. German whine and Russian cheese on German and English forums while on Russian forums the tastes reversed.

Maybe you are not forgetting. Maybe you didn't arrive until later but that's how it went.

[Igo kyu]

The best boom and zoom planes were axis (German), the best turn and burn planes were axis (Japanese (or did the Hurricane really out-turn them as it does in this sim?)).

To say the axis has only turn and burn planes, is as silly as to say they only had boom and zoom planes, they had both, but they weren't the same planes or in the same theatres.

[JtD]

Originally Posted by Jumoschwanz

The United States and USSR advantage in WWII air combat was either in teamwork and/or overwhelming production capability.

and/or better performing aircraft, better trained pilots, better logistics, better weapons, tougher aircraft, better strategic and/or tactical doctrine, better recon and/or whatnotelse. I don't really know what kind of statement you were trying to make, but taking it at face value, it is far from the truth.

[Igo kyu]

Originally Posted by MaxGunz

Dogfighting is for biplanes and beginners.

Cobblers, dogfighting is for the guy in the plane that turns best. You have to know which plane is which.

[MaxGunz]

LOL, turning ability and the power to keep it up are relative and as in all cases depends on the pilot. Angles fighting limits options by wasting energy. It has far less potential than energy fighting.

[K_Freddie]

Originally Posted by Jumoschwanz View Post
The United States and USSR advantage in WWII air combat was either in teamwork and/or overwhelming production capability.

Originally Posted by JtD

and/or better performing aircraft, better trained pilots, better logistics, better weapons, tougher aircraft, better strategic and/or tactical doctrine, better recon and/or whatnotelse. I don't really know what kind of statement you were trying to make, but taking it at face value, it is far from the truth.

Really JtD... I expected more insight/historical knowledge from you

[horseback]

Originally Posted by majorfailure

I see how your statements could be percieved as racism, but I don't think they were.
But I fail to see how the averagely bigger, stronger pilot necessarily has an advantage over the smaller one. He MAY have, but if the construction of the cockpit is optimised for the smaller pilot he MAY even be at a disadvantage. We would have to put two or more test candidates into a Zero pit and see what stick force they could exert to be absolutely sure.
And even then I don't see the point - there are many other abilities that I'd like to see in a fighter pilot before considering physical ability, e.g. eyesight, advanced combat maneuvres, team tactics, marksmanship.
Just imagine that the all the rookie Japanese fighter pilots in 1943 would look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his best days - but still have the same lack of training - would they have done any better?
And then imagine they all had top notch eyesight and 5000h of training - they could have looked like Homer Simpson and still would have had an impact.
A certain level of physical fitness is needed though, a fat astmathic will never be a fine fighter pilot - no matter how keen his eyesight is.

And I'm glad IL2 does not model different countries pilots differently - that would just open a can of very slimy worms.
Could be interesting to randomly have different pilot models - as selectable difficulty option -and the AI would be affected, too.

That wasn't my complaint-American test pilots had the same issues in captured Zeros at those speeds and made it part of their reports; that's how Allied fighter pilots knew what to look for. I merely mentioned in passing that if it was harder to roll for a fit, healthy guy, it would be that much tougher on a guy 30% smaller who was at a frontline base in Rabaul or New Guinea and had been missing a few meals of late.

Fighter pilots in WWII were generally the cream of the crop in almost all nations; you had to be a near perfect specimen before you even entered training, and if you weren't bright enough to pass the the classes and capable of accepting military discipline, you were washed out before you ever got into a cockpit. That shouldgo without saying.

We are moving far afield from the original issue; the real-life fact that the Zero’s maneuverability dropped off at higher speeds due to increasingly high stick forces as speeds went further past 200 kts indicated. It dropped off so much that the phenomenon became quickly recognizable to experienced Allied pilots, who then were able to exploit that weakness by keeping their speed above 200kts/225mph. It was not a matter of ‘greater strength’ in Western pilots because Western pilots who tested captured Zeros all noted the same high stick forces and also could not achieve the kind of precise or tight maneuvers in it at the higher speeds that it demonstrated at speeds just a few knots slower. It was a matter of Allied designs having lighter ailerons at higher speeds, because Western design philosophy placed a higher premium on speed and firepower than on low speed turn and climb/acceleration.

If the AI pilots all have the ‘same’ strength AND the high stick forces were part of the A6M series’ FM, one could reasonably expect the Zeros’ high G maneuvering to drop off at higher speeds and their recovery from dives to be mainly in a straight line until their excess speed was burned off. But they don’t, just as AI gunners in some planes are much more accurate than AI gunners in other aircraft for reasons unknown. In an offline campaign, it is that much harder to use the tactics used successfully in real life when your AI wingman bugs off and the AI aircraft you are fighting don’t exhibit the sort of limitations that the aircraft that they are supposed to be modeled on had.

cheers

horseback

[MaxGunz]

I read about conditions at Guadalcanal for the Marine pilots there. Malaria being rife and you kept flying until you couldn't get in the plane. Not being able to get a night's sleep often due to air raids. And yes, missing the occasional meal as well as going up in planes with unfixed gigs that occasionally amounted to crash on or soon after takeoff with the lucky ones only having to turn back. It was very bad for the Marines from the start and well into it at Henderson Field.

But their stick roll forces were not so great at high speed.

I think that the difference came when tactics that took advantage of such margins were put into operation, same as with the AVG & the 14th Air Corps and that those tactics were in play before Guadalcanal was taken.

Those tactics allowed the US pilots to decline close-in dogfighting and win.

One thing about planes with great low speed turning ability is that it's not great at mid speed and loses out before things get really fast. I've taken advantage of that in many sims online and off just through tactics. Taking the faster, less turn easy plane and flying fast large half-vertical egg-shapes I've been able to hit the slow movers and be gone.
Any that did have speed up were generally not able to follow and get lead enough to shoot. They could fly inside my great circle but still losing lap after lap while almost all the time I held the initiative. When I'd get to the top well above them I could hold up there if it even looked like the sucker might get a shot timed and drop down behind him in seconds. When I was roaring along the bottom I had enough smash to alter course a good 10-15 degrees quickly without much slowing and be in a very different part of the sky than my path had been headed rather more quickly than my slower moving adversary could respond to. I could roll onto a new heading at any time and had the speed to make something real of it while my slower enemy had less of all that including the ability to turn at the speed he was forced to fly. His ability to use initiative was almost nil.

Of course if I hadn't been able to shoot deflection well, it wouldn't have meant so much. That's why I think there are so few good energy fighters. You have to get past needing to sit on someone's tail and pepper them from close in to energy fight.